Tim Weisberg — Inside the Celtics: Star point guard to QB a rejuvenated team game

Sunday

Oct 28, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 28, 2012 at 12:12 AM

When the NBA season kicks off Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics will once again be competing for a championship.

When the NBA season kicks off Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics will once again be competing for a championship.

This was supposed to be the season where the Celtics began to rebuild following the era of the New Big Three. It was supposed to be the start of another stretch of growing pains and mediocrity, but instead, it looks like the Boston youth movement will have to learn on the fly as the Celts remain in the hunt.

In putting together this year's roster, Danny Ainge has done the seemingly impossible — he's built a team that can and should compete for a title this year, while still putting an eye toward the future. The result is perhaps the best-comprised roster, at least on paper, of Ainge's tenure.

The three keys — perhaps even a New New Big Three — are back. Kevin Garnett did what everybody who saw his play at the end of last season and in the playoffs knew he was going to do, and that's put off retirement for a few more years. He'll be back along with the captain, Paul Pierce, and the floor general, Rajon Rondo. Pierce is learning how to thrive in his elder statesman role, while Rondo is poised to (finally) join the NBA elite this season.

By now, everyone is aware of the saga of Ray Allen departing the Celtics and signing with their rivals for the Eastern Conference crown, the defending champion Miami Heat. We won't dwell on Allen much in this space — he's now part of the past, after all — but Ainge did a terrific job of cushioning the loss.

Head coach Doc Rivers will find that his roster is more flexible than ever, and he's been hinting around that he might finally be able to put out a number of different starting lineups based on match-ups rather than injury, as its been for the past few seasons. No matter what five players he puts on the floor, they're going to have distinct advantages over the opposition. Sometimes they'll be cagier, wilier than the other team, and use their experience as an advantage. Other times, they'll have the younger, more athletic bodies to put out on the court to run with Rondo and wear other teams down.

The biggest improvement for the Celtics will be scoring off their bench; last season, they could only manage 21.4 points per game, which put them second-to-last in the NBA. With Rivers trying to institute a plan that would limit the minutes of his older players in order to keep them fresh for the postseason, the bench was counted on for more. They didn't deliver. When Allen was demoted to the bench last season, he apparently took it as a slight. Instead, it looks more like it was a necessity, because the Boston reserves for so offensively inept.

It was that lack of depth that played a big part in their postseason losses, none bigger than Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Miami.

Already in the preseason, we've seen that the second unit is record to provide so much more this time around. First, it helps that Jeff Green is back after missing all of last season with a heart ailment; he was expected to be the sixth man a year ago, and he's poised to be able to fill that role now. But he'll have competition, both from veterans like Jason Terry and a rookie, Jared Sullinger.

In fact, Sullinger has looked so good during the exhibition games that many insiders are predicting he'll supplant Brandon Bass in the starting lineup, putting him in the frontcourt alongside Garnett.

Courtney Lee is capable of hitting big 3-pointers just as Allen did, and he's a much better defender. He'll be the starting two-guard until Avery Bradley returns from double shoulder surgery — believed to be sometime in December — but even then, Bradley could be in a battle to get the starting job away from Lee.

Heck, even NBA punchline Darko Milicic should be able to contribute something to this team, giving them depth in the frontcourt along with Chris Wilcox (returning from his own heart issues) and even some potential help down the road from rookie project Fab Melo, although he's likely a candidate for the D-League.

Versatility was a strength going into training camp. Chemistry has been a reward coming out of it. These Celtics are on the same page, ready to do whatever it takes to win a title. In fact, they talked quite a bit about being the best pick-setting team in the league, which must have Rivers thrilled. You know your players are all about what's best for the team when the talk heading into the season is about setting screens for the other guys to score. Juxtapose that with Ray Allen talking to the Miami media about how he wasn't getting his in Boston, and you can see the paradigm shift between last year's Celtics and this year's version.

Of course, how much the Celtics can do is all dependent on how quickly this can all come together for them. The Atlantic Division is much improved, with Andrew Bynum joining the Philadelphia 76ers and the Brooklyn Nets sporting their own Big Three of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Gerald Wallace. But Bynum now has to prove he's a force without Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant alongside him, and the Nets are dangerously thin off the bench. It's still a virtual lock that the Celtics will take the Atlantic, and that really just leaves one team standing in the way in the East.

With Allen now in Miami, the television networks are already salivating over that storyline nearly seven months before a potential playoff matchup between the two teams. But the deeper, younger and more athletic Celtics might prove to be more of a challenge than the rest of the East — even the Heat — are expecting.

Tim Weisberg covers the Boston Celtics for The Standard-Times. Contact him at timweisberg@hotmail.com